Elisabeth Hasselbeck's 'PC Police' Meme Validated By Editor Of College Newspaper With History Of Racial Insensitivity

While Fox News warmly embraces conservatives who feel besieged by the forces of godless secular forces, it dismisses those who are offended by conservatives as "politically correct" liberals who make life miserable for good conservatives. Yesterday, Elisabeth Hasselbeck invoked "PC" in her smear of a Dartmouth student who objected to a "Phiesta" themed fraternity party. Her guest from the Dartmouth Review, Nicholas Desatnick, validated the message about pesky minorities getting uppity. But while Hasselbeck was showcasing him as a voice for Dartmouth students, what she didn't mention is that his paper is not the official college news outlet but an independent entity formed in 1980 by "four discontented campus conservatives." And when it comes to racial issue, this newspaper has some junk in the trunk. But then this is Fox & Friends...

Fox & Friends loves to whine about the imaginary problem of how so called political correctness is impacting those who think racial humor is just fine, those who want to raise their boys as manly men, and those who think that allowing high schools to have special facilities for the transgendered is the end of the world as we know it. And, of course, the war on Christmas is based on those nasty Jesus haters who push their politically correct "Happy Holidays." In advancing Fox's anti "PC" meme, Fox & Friends have special "PC Police" imagery, complete with sirens and police graphics. Yesterday, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, standing in front of a visual of prison bars with the patented Fox & Friends "PC Police" shield, proclaimed "the PC police are at it again" because a Dartmouth fraternity party, benefiting cardiac research, had to be cancelled because a student was offended by the fiesta theme. She read a statement from the student who is now, as we speak, probably getting death threats from the nice Fox fans.

She introduced her guest, Nicholas Desatnick, editor-in-chief of the Dartmouth Review who wrote an editorial, in his paper, "because the mood on campus was such that there was a lot of frustration, even anger over the way in which this was handled" by the school's administration" and he "felt the need" to provide " a more cohesive, holistic response." Hasselbeck prompted him to talk about "the general fear on campus." He said that, from his perspective, the general sense was - wait for it - "one of outrage." He claimed that "people were horrified that the reaction from the administration was such that the sensitivity of one group was able to outweigh what was a charitable event..." He claimed that "most people on the campus are in agreement with the opinions we express in the paper." What he didn't say was that the presidents of the two sponsoring fraternities the event canceled the parties because they took the student complaint "seriously."

Hasselbeck then brought home the propaganda bacon: "what's your fear, here with this move?" Desatnick response could have been written by Roger Ailes: "Our concern that the rule of law on Darthmouth campus seems to be eroding slowly, it seems like the group with the ripest sense of self-esteem gets the ripest pass when it comes to these issues. There's no longer a sense of bringing people to the table discussing problems if you're offended, the most sensitive, you prevail. There's been a sense of frustration with that climate and a sense of cultural drift..." He noted that he hadn't spoke to the offended student but would be open to it.

It's appropriate that Hasselbeck would speak to somebody from the *Dartmouth Review as it is a right wing publication formed by professors who, like those on Fox News, were concerned about liberal bias in higher education. And it's also ironic that Desatnick talked about who those with "the ripest sense of self-esteem gets the ripest pass" when he is able to take his and his paper's right wing whine to America's not so "fair & balanced" national network. As reported in "The Dartmouth," the official Dartmouth paper founded in 1799, this issue is complex and deserving of discussion. That didn't happen on Fox & Friends!

*The Dartmouth Review is quite controversial going back to when it was founded at which time the writers opposed affirmative action and demanded that Dartmouth "purge most non-Western curriculum materials and coursework." In an early issue, a photograph of a lynched black person was posted with an interview of a former KKK member. It's positions have been labeled as sexist, anti-Semitic and racist. When right wing fave Dinesh D'Souza was editor, the paper outed gay students. When Laura Ingrham was editor, the paper published transcripts of secretly taped transcripts of the college's gay association. At that point, "William Buckley and Jack Kemp "severed their masthead and financial ties." When Dartmouth students, in 2006, protested what they felt was racism and sexism on campus, the Dartmouth review's cover showed "a scalp-wielding Native American and the headline "The Natives Are Getting Restless!"

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Priscilla, I’ve got a question. When you wrote “because the mode on campus,” was that a direct quote from the clip* from either Hasselhack or Desatnick? Or is it an error in transcribing the clip? As it stands now, it doesn’t make sense. The correct word should be “mood.” If the quote is correctly transcribed, then it seems as though someone is trying to sound high-falutin’ and proving just the opposite. (And if the quote is from the Dartmouth student, I hope his parents are proud of the “education” he’s getting if he can so easily screw up mood/mode. The words can by synonymous in certain cases, but this isn’t really one of those cases. It’s sort of like the way people “over-correct” their grammar in things like “between you and I.”)

*Only asking since gods know I have no stomach to watch anything from FoxNoise. That’s a job for NewsHounds.